BANGOR – A Falmouth native has been tapped to serve as assistant city solicitor.

Paul Nicklas, a 2001 graduate of Dartmouth College in New Hampshire and a 2006 graduate of the University of Virginia School of Law, officially assumed his new post with the city last week, according to City Solicitor Norman Heitmann.

Nicklas’ experience so far includes serving as a clerk for a judge in Laredo, Texas.

“I loved Laredo, but my parents are in Maine and I’ve always really loved this state,” Nicklas said last week during an interview at City Hall.

Nicklas said he pursued the Bangor position because of his interest in environmental and land use issues, and because it could provide a wider range of experiences than working for a private law practice.

With regard to municipal law, he said, “You get to do an enormous number of different things, and that has enormous appeal to me,” he said in an interview last week at City Hall.

A man of many interests, Nicklas spent time between college and law school as a volunteer with AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps).

Nicklas’ AmeriCorps stint took him to such places as California, where he coached and tutored elementary school students in Sacramento and helped fight fires in the El Dorado National Forest; Pocatello, Idaho, where he worked with a neighborhood housing program; Guam, where he helped the American Red Cross provide disaster relief; Salt Lake City, where he worked at a camp for people with disabilities; and Kauai, Hawaii, where he helped build Habitat for Humanity homes for residents.

He also has spent some time living in Boston, where he worked in the children’s programming division at public broadcasting station WGBH.

Nicklas succeeds John Hamer, who left the assistant city solicitor post he had held for more than eight years to take a position with Rudman & Winchell, the Bangor law firm for which his wife, Anne-Marie Storey Hamer, also works.

During his farewell coffee at City Hall late last month, Hamer said he wanted to specialize in employment law.